Game of Drones: Norway turns to drones to find trash in the fjords

Norway's fjords have long inspired the
country's artists and drawn streams of tourists. In winter, their ice-laced
surfaces shimmer beside snow-capped mountains: a vision of natural beauty,
blissfully untouched. But lost in the depths of the fjord in Oslo, stretching out from the capital, is a
trove that would please any intrepid archaeologist or Nordic noir sleuth:
sunken Viking trinkets, warships from WWII and more. Mostly, though, the fjord
is filled with garbage, like unwanted cars. And that has alarmed
environmentalists.

Now,
the capital is turning to new technology to help pinpoint the litter so that
human divers can scour it off the seabed. This past Thursday (March 1), board
members of Oslo's
Port Authority approved a pioneering trash-removal plan. "We will test out
drones," said Svein Olav Lunde, the chief technical officer of the Oslo
Port Authority, shortly after the meeting, explaining how these unmanned
vessels will be used to help clear out underwater "islands of
trash."Geir Rognlien Elgvin, aboard member, says he believes that Oslo's port will be the
first in the world to try this sort of trash pickup. The drones will plunge
into the depths of Oslo Fjord this spring. An electric-powered ship with a
crane will join the cleanup fleet by next year (2019).

Oslo is turning to drone technology
partly because of a dead dolphin - bloodied, beached and ensnared in plastic.
Gory images of the carcass, taken in January on a trash-strewn shore of Oslo Fjord , resonated on social media
among Norwegians, who tend to see their jagged coastline as a paragon of
untouched natural beauty. Ambitious plans to clean up the city's industrial
waste and sewage have been in the works for decades, along with a proposal for
a car-free city centre and a ban on using oil to heat buildings that is to go
into effect in 2020. Campaigns like these won Oslo the European Green Capital Award for
2019. Fjords are indelibly linked to Norway 's identity as a seafaring
nation. The long, narrow, deep inlets form at the base of mountains where ocean
water flows into valleys formed near the coast. The Oslo Fjord is 62 miles (100km) long.